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6 Pressing Challenges Facing Women and Girls - And How We're Helping

By Allison Bearden

1. Financial Exclusion. Thirty-seven percent (37%) of women worldwide have a bank account compared to 46% of men. Additionally, more women report using someone else’s account than men, which may reveal key barriers women face in opening an account on their own. Despite the gender gap in global financial inclusion rates, research affirms that children’s lives improve when women are more involved in money management in their households.

Opportunity recognizes the challenges women face in accessing financial tools, and at the same time, the significant influence they have on their families’ well-being. We disburse 92% of our loans to women around the world, helping them build stronger businesses and households.

Through our education finance initiative, Opportunity equips students, families and schools with financial services that are designed to improve educational outcomes. Our school fee loans enable low-income families to afford sending their children to school. With access to this loan, parents can provide all of their children with an education instead of removing young girls from the classroom so they can marry, help at home or earn money.

Opportunity provides financial solutions that improve sanitation practices in poor communities. Schools utilize our school improvement loan to construct private bathrooms to protect the safety and privacy of students. Opportunity also forges partnerships with health-focused organizations to collaboratively improve public health. In India, we have provided loans for household toilets in partnership with Water.org. These investments are helping keep many young women safe, healthy and in school.

Opportunity cannot singlehandedly change social prejudices that perpetuate inequalities related to land and shelter. However, we can advocate for systemic changes by offering housing microfinance tools. In Ghana, we provide housing loans with construction technical assistance to help safely improve homes and offer property folios to facilitate the land title acquisition process. Our goal is to connect low-income people with valuable resources that equip them to legally own land and build safe, comfortable homes.

Through our agricultural finance initiative, Opportunity equips vulnerable farmers in seven countries with the tools they need to sustainably increase their incomes. We provide smallholder farmers with access to a full range of banking services, financial education, training in Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) and linkages to local crop markets. Recognizing the persistent challenges women face in accessing land, financial services and inputs, up to 40% of Opportunity’s agricultural clients are women in some countries.

In India, Opportunity partners with the Healing Fields Foundation to equip low-income women to become community health facilitators (CHFs) who promote improved health in marginalized regions. Their health education sessions cover topics including first aid, menstrual hygiene, sanitation and nutrition, equipping communities to adopt healthier habits. More than 1,600 women are CHFs or CHFs-in-training and 126,500 households – representing approximately 500,000 low-income people – have received health education from a CHF